The Shy Dominant (3 page)

Without speaking, Dharma followed him, but something in his manner had her heart thumping and heavy rocks weighing down her gut.

He closed the door softly behind them, gave her a look she couldn’t read then stepped behind his desk to stand and look out the window which faced the driveway cooking under the hot sun, heat waves rising like smoke off a grill.

“You’re scaring me.” Dharma’s fingers dug into her palms.

“I never told you that shortly after meeting you, I asked my wife for a divorce,” Fred admitted flatly. “I guess you inspired me to try to change my life for the better, kind of how I really want you not to go back to work at that dive.” He gave her a pointed look so she’d know he hadn’t forgotten the issue with her working at the bar. “Months ago, when I hired a private investigator and tracked her down, she was working in a cafe in Tucson.”

It hurt to hear about his wife. She knew they’d been separated for years, but the woman had a claim on Fred.

“So?”

“So now she’s met someone and plans to remarry.”

“You told me she left you years ago.” He hadn’t said he didn’t still love his wife, Dharma remembered with a sharp splinter to the heart.

He rubbed the back of his neck, his T-shirt damp from a recent run, his body hard and muscled and everything she’d ever wanted. She wanted to tug up that shirt and lick his tattoos. “She wants time with my girls, Dharma. Half the year at least.”

Dharma blinked. “Excuse me?”

He spun to look at her, his eyes burning like a gasoline fire. “Stacy and Mattie. My wife wants them back part time.”

“But…they’ve been with you for years. They
live
with you.” Dharma knew because all the years she’d served him coffee he’d told her about Stacy’s softball game or how Mattie was dead set against getting braces for her slight overbite.

He covered his eyes. “Oh, hell.”

“Fred.” She moved around the desk and reached out to touch his tense back then just let her hand fall, muttering, “Screw it.” She put her arms around him from behind, holding him. “Your wife just can’t take your children. If she wanted them so much, why hasn’t she been in the picture?” In all Fred’s proud stories of his kids, she’d never heard anything about his wife. It was like there was a black hole in his family that he never spoke about.

He gave a snort that sounded wet with tears. He still had his eyes covered in the manner of a man who didn’t like anyone to see him give way to emotion.

Oh, Fred. Oh, God, baby…
She shoved those words deep inside. He didn’t need her sympathy right now. He needed a friend he could talk this out with.

“The man she wants to marry is big on family and he has the money to support one. He can’t understand why Marilyn doesn’t have the children,” Fred said. “She’s never shown much interest in them, but I think she wants to put on a show for him. It kills me that they might fall for her act, might get hurt.”

Anger burned. “Fred, you’ve raised them. Your wife just split and left them, so surely that counts for something?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded impossibly weary. “Judges still favour a mother taking the children.”

“But you have all kinds of contacts. I know you won’t let her do this. Come on, you’re just worried because you see it as your job to keep them safe.”

Fred’s muscles tightened. “I’m afraid,” he whispered. “Dharma, I’m afraid.”

“Fred.” Only his name. She couldn’t think what else to say. She wished she had the power to make everything all right.

“You’re such a beautiful father to those girls. Just last weekend you went through a roll of bills to win Stace a stuffed tiger at the fairground shooting gallery.”

He looked surprised. “You knew that?”

“You told me, remember? Over coffee on Monday morning. You were short a quarter so you told me why.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Yeah, I was short cash.”

“And you helped Mattie build a model of the Parthenon for her history class. It’s pretty kick ass.”

“It is.”

“These are your children, your girls.”

“I’m afraid that no matter what I do, they’ll be hurt.”

Her gut clenched. “That’s not right.”

“Oh, Dharma…” His tone reminded her that he saw her as too young, too idealistic. Her jaw hardened.

“It’s
not
right. What are you going to do about it?”

“I’m going to talk to the girls.”

She nodded, wishing he didn’t have to do that but knowing he could handle it. He might not see it, but she knew he’d die to keep them safe, to keep them from being hurt. And despite how bashful with her he sometimes seemed, she knew from watching him in the fire hall that no one pushed him around. “Can I…help somehow?”

“No.”

No, of course not. It was a family thing. She was his friend, she ached to be his lover, but she hadn’t really been introduced to his children.

She was on the outside.

“Fred, you’ll keep your family safe. You’re my hero, remember?”

“Am I really?” He looked like he ached to be her hero.

It hurt her heart the way he looked at her.

“I haven’t been courageous. I shut down when she left. Until I met you.”

“I don’t blame you. You had to take care of your family.”

He cleared his throat. “Trust you to see that.”

She gripped his face, rubbing the sides of his cheek and hearing the slight rasp of his whiskers against her palm. He closed his eyes under her touch.

“Fred.” Longing. Need. Anger. Comfort. She kissed him, arms tight around his neck, her lush body plastered to his hard frame.

“Oh, Jesus, you don’t know what you do to me. Dharma! You don’t know…” He was kissing her back. His big hands cupped her bottom, lifting her and suddenly she was on the edge of his desk. She could feel him, and oh, he was
big.
She felt an unaccustomed flash of nervousness.

His hand was on her calf, sliding up to where her body needed him.

“Dharma…” He was trembling as he laid his forehead against hers.

“Don’t,” she choked. “Don’t pull away and say I’m too young for you.”

But he stepped back from her, reaching out and smoothing her hair out of her face.

“I respect you too much to—”

“I don’t
want
just your respect,” she growled. Then she hopped off the desk, her body hurting. “Damn it, I’m sorry! You have too much on your plate right now. That got out of hand.” She blew out a shaky breath.

He nodded, his face hard, grim, but his eyes still burning. He made no effort to conceal how his body still needed her. She had to drag her gaze away from the intimidating shape of him outlined by his pants.

“Thanks for…listening to me.” He avoided her gaze.

Emotion gripped her throat. “Anytime.”

A hard knock on the door broke the moment.

“Yeah?” Fred called, all male authority again.

Luke Cade stuck his head in. “Fred, we’ve got a situation at that shell of a gas station that burned down last week. Two kids went inside on a dare and the structure has collapsed.”

“Shit!” Fred reached for his hard shelled helmet and his fireman’s heavy coat then brushed past her, following Luke at a run.

Dharma wrapped her arms around herself, knowing Fred would somehow find those kids and make them safe.

Her real life shy hero.

Chapter Two

Fred lay in moonlight spilling like silver over his king bed, staring up at the stars traversing across the skylight above.

The girls were asleep at last.

He’d burned dinner and hadn’t bothered to eat any himself, finally ordering pizza. Tonight he’d told his children about their mother’s upcoming wedding plans.

Stace had taken the news too quietly. Fred thought that, like him, his oldest daughter had been waiting to see if Marilyn would just come home one day and life would go back to the way it used to be. Of course, that hadn’t happened. He’d known in his gut his marriage was over years before she’d left. She’d emailed him a flippant note, filling him in on her new life.

Back then, he hadn’t shared the revelation with the girls.

Protecting them. He’d been protecting them. He couldn’t bear it if they thought that Marilyn’s new life was more important to her than her children.

She’d been living with a travel agent. Since then, Marilyn had never come home, never seemed much interested in hearing about Stacy or Mattie.

The worst had been the birthdays.

Fred had been sure she’d send a card for Stacy’s birthday, even just email her. Stacy had nagged him to check every day. Finally, he’d taken the coward’s way out—he’d picked up a birthday gift for Stacy and told her it was from her mother.

Fred had got quietly drunk that night once the girls were in bed.

Of course he’d called Marilyn from work, but she was disinterested. For Marilyn, their children had been an accident. She’d got pregnant with Stacy and they’d decided to get married. He’d known it wasn’t the life she’d wanted.

Marilyn wanted to be an artist and somehow that didn’t mean marriage and family. She’d teased him often enough about how his love of his career and duty was boring and predictable…but she’d loved sex with him, loved running her hands over his muscled body, sketching him. The longer they were married, the harder it had been for him to feel anything but empty, anything more than the stud who held her down, gave her the rough, demanding sex she loved. Then one night he’d come home and she’d been gone.

His wife was gone and Stacy had ballet lessons. Mattie had math homework. The house had been dark.

He’d told the girls not to worry, hustled Stacy to class, sat with Mattie through her assignment and ordered pizza. Thank fuck for pizza. It had become the family standby until his cooking had marginally improved.

He closed his eyes, rubbing his chest where he could almost feel the bruise left in his heart. Months had passed, and he’d learned to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving and where to hide the Easter baskets. He’d used the basic sewing skills he’d garnered in college to repair Stacy’s tutu.

He’d hired Mrs Collinson, their nearest neighbour, to stay with them when he had to work long shifts. He’d made ‘fake it till you make it’ his parental motto.

All that time he would have killed to have someone to talk to, really talk to so he could feel like a man again.

Then one day he’d walked into Sian’s coffee shop and there she’d been, Dharma, with her sparkling interest in people and husky, knowing laughter. She’d listened to him and she’d been delightfully easy on the eyes.

As well as another free spirit like his wife. Apparently he was doomed to be attracted to the same kind of woman.

He’d told himself it was all right to enjoy flirting with her. It wasn’t anything serious.

Until he’d woken up one night with the sheets damp with sweat. He’d dreamt he’d held her down, her long hair wrapped in one fist, wanting to give her the kind of raw, passionate sex he hadn’t felt in a long time.

He wanted her and slowly it changed everything.

He tried to stay away, but he couldn’t do it. Seeing her was sometimes the only thing that kept him alive as a man, pathetic as that was. He needed those moments with her, sandwiched between parent-teacher nights or walking through a canyon left barren by wild fires.

He needed her, but not as a friend.

He groaned, shifting onto his stomach.
He needed her now.

His cell phone mocked him from the bedside table. He could lie awake for another shitty night or he could call her. Just hear her voice.

She’d told him if he ever needed to talk he could call her, day or night.

Damn it, she’d hadn’t really meant it, he told himself. No one really expected you to take them up on such an offer.

But Dharma…she was different. He’d never met anyone like her.

The cell phone sat there, waiting…

It was in his fist. He hit her number.

It rang twice. “Fuck.” He moved his finger to end the call.

“Hello?” Her voice, deep with dreams.

“Uh, Dharma.”

“Fred? Fred, is that you?”

He didn’t know any other loser who would call her at four-thirty a.m. “Yeah.”

“Are you okay? Are the girls okay?” Anxiety sharpened her voice, took away the sexy sleepiness.

“They’re fine.” His throat closed. He felt awkward. He hadn’t dated a woman in years. And Dharma was so much younger, so much hipper than he was. Bad idea—calling her had been a
bad. Idea
.

“I’m so glad you called,” she said. “I was worried about you.”

“You were?”

“Umm.” He heard a rustling sound and couldn’t help but picture her on the sheets of her bed. Did she sleep naked? Sweat broke out on his chest as he imagined her lush breasts. He wanted them in his hands. He wanted to cup them, to kiss the large nipples.

“Of course. You talked to the girls?”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his eyes.

“That had to be rough.”

He grunted.

“Hang on a sec…” He heard more rustling.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting on a robe.”

He wanted to ask if she was wearing anything. Damn, that would be original. “I’m sorry I called you. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

She sighed. “Fred, it’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping well anyway.”

“No?”

“No, I don’t sleep well alone.”

His throat dried. Dharma laughed. “Now I’ve shocked you.”

“No. You’re a beautiful young woman.”

“I like men.”

Jealousy flared. He hated the thought of her being free. He wanted a claim on her so she only submitted to him, curled around him, shared her bed with
him
.

“Now you’ve gone quiet again.”

“I’m glad you’re alone!” he burst out. Then he reddened and was grateful she couldn’t see the colour staining his cheeks. Damn, he was barely experienced compared to her and it burned his ass.

“Fred. It’s all right.”

“I don’t need to be soothed by you.”

“Oh, I could put a smile on your face.”

He huffed out a breath, but he had hardened against the mattress as soon as she’d answered the phone. So yeah, she could definitely put a smile on his face.

“How did it go?”

“How do you think it went? Mattie says she doesn’t care. It may be true since she claims to barely remember her mother… Stacy, I don’t know. She’s been off lately.”